‘The only thing we can’t do is pay attention’: the deaf scholar who beat Fife council in courtroom

The slogan on Niamdh Braid’s powder-blue sweatshirt places it it seems that sufficient: “I define my own deaf identity.”

“We’re in a world that’s built for hearing people,” says the 16-year-old from Glenrothes in Fife, “and we have to navigate through it to find what works best for us.”

Earlier this 12 months, {the teenager} gained a felony fight together with her native council to have a British Sign Language interpreter in classes, after she realised how a lot of what was once mentioned at school she was once lacking out on.

Niamdh, who has been deaf since start, wears listening to aids, however can combat to apply in noisy environments and her most well-liked language is BSL.

As a more youthful kid, she didn’t have any deaf other people she may just glance as much as on TV or at the information. Now she hopes that via her advocacy “younger deaf kids can look up to me and see that they can achieve anything”.

“A lot of people think that because we can’t hear we can’t achieve high-earning jobs and go into good professions,” says Niamdh, whose favorite topic is fashionable research and who hopes to get into educating then politics when she grows older. “But the only thing we can’t do is hear – there’s nothing actually wrong with us. We can do anything that we put our mind to.”

Yet deaf kids are 8 occasions much more likely to go away faculty and not using a {qualifications}, consistent with the National Deaf Children’s Society, which financially supported Niamdh’s felony motion.

Niamdh was once speaking prematurely of a record by way of MSPs that may expose a vital fall within the choice of specialist lecturers of deaf other people in Scotland. It is prompting the NDCS to warn of a “growing crisis in deaf education” and loss of steering from native government about what sort of fortify they will have to be offering deaf kids in colleges.

At highschool, she explains, there was once an assumption that she didn’t want fortify as a result of she was once nonetheless reaching first rate grades.

But at Niamdh’s tribunal, an impartial overview by way of a deaf training specialist discovered she was once handiest getting access to 70% of what was once being mentioned at school, even if her instructor wore a microphone transmitting to her listening to aids.

Her dad, Steve, chips in: “If she was accessing 100% at the teaching, imagine what she could be achieving. Why should she settle for average just because she’s deaf?”

Constantly suffering to listen to got here at a heavy value, and Niamdh was once an increasing number of exhausted. “I was always tired, asking to go to my bed at four o’clock before I’d had anything to eat.” At weekend she was once too drained to head out together with her buddies.

After her request for a BSL interpreter was once became down, first by way of her faculty after which by way of Fife council, Niamdh felt she had no selection: “At this point it was getting close to my exams and I’d missed so much class already. I wanted to launch the action under my own name because it was for me, and I can voice my needs without the help of my parents.”

Giving proof, she defined that “it’s always a hearing person that makes decisions for the deaf person, and it shouldn’t be the case. Because hearing people don’t know what it’s like to go through life in a world that’s not built for them.”

Early closing 12 months the tribunal dominated that Niamdh was once being positioned at “substantial disadvantage”, however the appeals procedure was once handiest concluded this spring.

“When the last appeal got thrown out, it was the biggest relief I’ve ever felt,” says Niamdh. She went out for a Chinese buffet meal together with her oldsters and more youthful brother to rejoice.

The youngster, who takes phase in taekwondo competitions and is a faithful fan of the sanatorium drama collection Grey’s Anatomy, says she’s very fortunate to have an in depth team of buddies she’s identified since nursery faculty. “It’s all they’ve known with their friendship with me: if we’re talking they need to face me, make sure there’s not too much noise in the background.”

She feels strongly that younger deaf other people will have to be allowed to make their very own possible choices about what fortify they get right of entry to, and that they don’t seem to be a homogenous team: “Everyone has their own way of communicating. It’s not up to anyone else to decide that.

“It’s the kid’s choice of what they want to be as a deaf person. If they want to go without aids, if they want to have the hearing technology, if they want to be involved in the deaf community, let them decide.”

Fife council’s head of training and kids’s services and products, Angela Logue, mentioned: “We are continuing to work very closely with Niamdh and her family to meet her needs as identified by the outcomes of the tribunal.”